Game mechanics

General overview
Battle Brothers can be thought of as a turn based simulator of medieval/light fantasy battles. As with many turn based strategy games, it can be split into 2 parts:
1)'turn based' combat or tactical part on a hex tiled battlefield
2)'real time with pause' management or strategy part on the overland map and settlements

The player starts the game with 3 men, will hire more from settlements (up to 20) and can field a maximum of 12 men in battles. All men require gold and provisions for upkeep.

As the player progresses through the game, 3 general parameters are improved:
1)XP (earned from battles) which leads to more levels, stats and perks for the men
2)Gold (earned from completing contracts, battles and selling items) which is used to hire men, purchase supplies (tools/medicine/food/etc) and also better weapons/armor/equipment
3)Renown which modifies contract payout and Relations with various settlements which modify buying and selling prices

Contents

As of full release version 1.1, difficulty can now be customized separately for 3 game aspects (combat, economy, starting funds) with Ironman mode as a separate option. For each aspect there are three difficulty levels (beginner/veteran/expert).

Increasing Combat difficulty makes opponents more challenging and numerous. There is a greater enemy presence on the Global map with enemy groups and lairs more likely to have more and/or better troops.

Increasing Economic difficulty makes contracts pay less. Beginner also increases resource carrying capacity whereas on Expert, deserters take their equipment with them. Selling prices for various items at settlements are also reduced at higher difficulties.

For starting gold and supplies, difficulty is tiered as high, medium and low (previously beginner/veteran/expert in older builds).

Crowns

Provisions

Tools

Ammo

Medicine

High:

2500

50

40

80

30

Medium:

2000

50

20

40

20

Low:

1500

50

10

20

10

Optionally, you can enable the "Ironman" mode for each difficulty level when starting a new campaign.With this mode enabled for a campaign, the game saves automatically and the player is not able to set manual savepoints. Therefore the player has to live with every decision he makes and can not reload to a previous state other than the last autosave.

Things that are NOT modified by chosen difficulty levels:

Enemies will carry the same equipment with the same stats on all difficulty levels

Availability of items and supplies from towns and cities is unaffected by difficulty

The character's level is a value between 1 and 11 and measures experience in battle. Characters rise in levels as they gain experience and are able to increase their attributes and gain perks that make them better at the mercenary profession.

The introduction of "Veteran Levels" allows mercenaries to level even farther than level 11. Every level above 11 (= Veteran Level) requires 5000 XP and there is NO perk point awarded and the stat rolls are reduced to a maximum of +1 for three stats. Veteran levels are capped at L42.

Some recruits with military backgrounds may already have a few levels under their belt. If you hire a brother who already has one or more levels, you can distribute his perk points and stat roll level ups after you hired him as you do with a normal mercenary.

XP gain in combat: The person who did the killing blow gets 20% of the "XP value of an enemy". The other 80% is distributed equally amongst all men who are still alive.[1]
Details on "total XP value" for various enemies can be found here: XP awards for enemies.

Your soldiers aren't noble adventurers fighting for truth or justice, they are in it for the money. A company without money and supplies will quickly have no members left.
Every soldier gets paid a daily wage of crowns, if you fail to pay them, their mood will decrease and after a while and if angered enough, they may decide to desert your company.
The wage is increased by 2 crowns per level up and the character trait greedy increases the wage right away by 2 crowns.

Each brother consumes 2 units of food per day unless they have certain traits like spartan or gluttonous.
If you fail to feed them, their mood will decrease and after a while and if angered enough, they may decide to desert your company.
The quality of food currently doesn't hava any effect, although there is an event ingame, that when you have a good diversitiy of food (also with high quality food like venison) that will boost the mood of your men.

High quality provisions usually take longer to spoil than lower quality provisions. Your mercenaries will always eat or drink the provisions which are the closest to spoil.

Settlement vendors (e.g. Temples, Training Halls, Barbers, etc) are closed and not available during the Night portion of the day/night cycle. It is not possible to recruit new mercenaries during the Night either. Taverns are the only settlement building open at any hour of the in-game day/night cycle.

A complete day in-game is about 1 minute 45 seconds in real time. Use the Space Bar or click the pause button next to the clock at the top of the screen to pause the game. The passage of time is also halted while in town, while in an event dialogue or during combat. While the game is not paused on the world map, provisions will be consumed, damage gear flagged for repair will be repaired (provided you have Tools and Supplies) and wounds will heal (provided you have Medical Supplies). Wages are paid to your mercenaries daily at noon (once Afternoon starts).

Travel on the overland map is slowed during Night and sight radius is reduced, making unexpected attacks by enemy groups more likely.

Enemy troop sizes are influenced by many factors, the overarching one being Combat difficulty which is set at the start of the game, which increases both numbers and tier (more higher tier mobs like Brigand Leaders).

Contract difficulty scales with time, the strength of your roster, the difficulty rating (skulls), the type of contract, and some factors specific to the type of contract – for example, escort contracts are generally more difficult the longer you travel, as it increases the chance to run into enemies. Renown does not factor into contract difficulty, but it does factor heavily into contract rewards; the more renown you have, the more you'll be paid. Contract reward also scales with the difficulty rating (skulls) of contracts, which is why it offers some indication as to the contract difficulty.

Difficulty of non-contract locations and roaming parties scales mostly with distance to civilization and time. Roaming parties also scale slightly with player strength, but less so than contracts, and non-contract locations don't scale with player strength at all.
[3]

Therefore, contract-spawned mobs and locations are always closely matched to the player's party and offer an appropriate challenge. As non-contract locations do not scale to the player's party strength, far-off locations will probably be risky or difficult early in the game, whereas in the late game, these become juicier targets for unique hunting, especially if the player has levelled up speedily.

Roster strength or party strength as mentioned above, takes into account number of men and their levels. [4] Based on in-game tests, roster strength has a very significant impact on enemy troop size and composition. [5] From further testing, gear does not appear to have an impact on roster strength.

Mousing over lairs usually reveals rough assessments of numbers (detailed in table below) and troop types for the defenders.

Your renown is your repute as a professional mercenary company and reflects how reliable and competent people judge you to be. The higher your renown, the higher the reward from contracts and the more difficult contracts people will entrust you with, and the more resources your enemies will spend on working against you. Renown increases on successfully completing contracts and winning battles, and decreases on failing to do so.

The company has 100 Renown (Unknown) upon starting a new campaign and gains 5 from the 1st mandatory fight.

In the full release version v1.1, Renown gain from completing contracts is 25 (halved from build 0.6). Renown from winning battles is usually 5 (again halved from build 0.6). Lair battles can give 10. To compensate for slower Renown progression from regular sources, the full release features Ambitions which give 100 Renown each upon completion.

Renown is lost upon retreating from battles (typically -15) and also lost when cancelling contracts (typically -75 when no gold taken in advance). Renown can have negative values (ie -15 Renown is labelled as Unreliable).

While Battle Brothers is primarily a turn based tactical simulator, managing your funds well will go a long way towards having an easier time in hiring good men and gearing up. Buy/Sell prices of items in markets are largely determined by:
1)Economic difficulty
2)Settlement type/size
3)Settlement Relations
4)Settlement status

The general scheme is to buy cheaply/restock supplies at smaller settlements (trade goods, tools/medicine/etc) and and sell loot/trade goods at a profit at larger settlements. Repairing items before selling is favorable if the increase in selling price exceeds cost of tools used in repairs. Building good Relations with these settlements by doing contracts for them and taking advantage of favorable settlement status modifiers will further increase profit margin.